ITN has announced a partnership with a group of universities to make more than 3,000 hours of archive footage available to students online.
NewsFilm Online, which launches this week, is the result of a major programme to digitise a century of broadcast news reports and is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) – a group that supports the use of technology in education.
The new site, nfo.ac.uk, features a number of historic news clips from ITN Source – the archive news licensing service that includes material from both ITN and Reuters.
Among the clips made available to students is film footage of the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910, the 1969 moon landing and the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
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The chairman of Jisc, Professor Ron Cooke, said NewsFilm Online aimed to unlock the “wealth of material” gathering dust in the vaults of British broadcasters.
ITN‘s outgoing chief executive Mark Wood, who is leaving the broadcaster in the new year, said: “This great video content brings the events of the past century to life. The NewsFilm initiative is yet another example of the rapidly expanding use of video content at all levels of education.”
The launch is the latest move by ITN into education in recent years. The group has a shareholding in digital education firm Espresso Education and also provides footage to Teachers TV.
ITN Source also has licensing deals with Granada, Channel 4, Fox News and Setanta – although news clips from these providers are not included in the NewsFilm service.
City University journalism professor Stewart Purvis said: “NewsFilm Online is a ground-breaking example of a creative partnership between higher education and a leading commercial news archive.
“It is set to move the agenda forwards in the appreciation of the long-term educational and scholarly value of broadcast news.”
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